Tuesday, June 14, 2022 Armenian Opposition Scales Back Protests June 14, 2022 Armenia - Opposition supporters demonstrate in Yerevan, June 14, 2022. More than six weeks after the start of their “resistance movement,” Armenia’s main opposition groups announced late on Tuesday their decision to scale back virtually daily demonstrations aimed at toppling Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. In what they called a change of tactics, they said they will dismantle tents pitched in the center of Yerevan, switch to weekly rallies and try to attract a larger following. Ishkhan Saghatelian, one of the opposition leaders, admitted that many Armenians unhappy with Pashinian’s government have avoided participating in the protests. “We have not yet managed to get all those people to the streets and to bring them to this square. There are still people who think this is s fight for power, for the return of former rulers to power,” Saghatelian told thousands of supporters rallying in Yerevan’s France Square, the site of the opposition tent camp. Armenia - Opposition leader Ishkhan Saghatelian speaks at a rally in Yerevan, June 14, 2022. The two opposition alliances represented in the Armenian parliament launched their campaign there on May 1 two weeks after Pashinian signaled his readiness to recognize Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and “lower the bar” on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh acceptable to the Armenian side. They accused Pashinian of helping Baku regain full control of Karabakh. Opposition supporters have since regularly marched through the city center, closed roads and blocked the entrances to government buildings, repeatedly clashing with riot police. The most serious of those clashes, which broke out on June 3, left dozens of protesters and police officers seriously injured. Pashinian and his political allies have dismissed the opposition demands for his resignation. They say that the opposition has failed to attract popular support for regime change. Armenia - Former Armenian President Robert Kocharian (center) participates in an opposition rally in Yerevan, June 14, 2022. Saghatelian, who has been the main speaker at the protests, put a brave face on the failure to unseat the prime minister. He claimed that the opposition has managed to “awaken the society” and scuttle a “new capitulation agreement” with Azerbaijan. The protests have showed that Pashinian lacks a popular “mandate to lead Armenia to vital concessions” to Baku, he said. “We will definitely oust Nikol but we will do that bloodlessly,” Saghatelian told the crowd. The opposition forces, he went on, have to “change the structure and tactic of our resistance movement in a way that will allow us to give it new impetus.” They will now hold major rallies on a weekly basis and set up, in the meantime, new structures in and outside Yerevan, he said. Saghatelian said they will also keep fighting for the release of over three dozen opposition activists and supporters arrested during the protest movement. The vast majority of them were charged with assaulting police officers or government loyalists. Opposition leaders reject the accusations as politically motivated. Russia Set For Key Role In Azeri Transit Through Armenia June 14, 2022 • Sargis Harutyunyan Armenia - Russian border guards stationed in Syunik province are inspected by Russian Ambassador Sergei Kopyrkin, May 24, 2022. Russian border guards are expected to carry out border checks on Azerbaijani travellers and goods that will transit Armenia’s territory as part of Armenian-Azerbaijani transport links facilitated by Moscow. Armenia and Azerbaijan are to reopen their border to commercial and passenger traffic under the terms of a Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped their six-week war for Nagorno-Karabakh in November 2020. The agreement specifically commits Yerevan to opening rail and road rinks that will connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said last week that the Armenian side has agreed to simplify border crossing procedures for those who will use the planned transit routes. He did not elaborate. The Armenian government has still not commented on the arrangement announced by Lavrov. Sources familiar with the arrangement divulged some of its details to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. According to them, Azerbaijani cargos and travellers will be checked by Russian border guards and then Armenian customs officers when crossing the Armenian border. Armenian security personnel will then escort them to the nearest Azerbaijani border checkpoint. A Russian officer will be embedded with each armed escort, the sources said. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in December that passage through that “corridor” must be exempt from Armenian border controls. Yerevan rejected his demands. In an interview with the Al Jazeera TV channel aired on Tuesday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian insisted that the Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements call for only conventional transport links between two countries. “We have only one corridor in our region,” Pashinian said. “It’s the Lachin corridor connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.” Areg Kochinian, a Yerevan-based political analyst, suggested that the “simplified” border control regime would compromise Armenia’s full control over the transit road and railway leading to Nakhichevan. “If Russian border guards, escorts are deployed there and the whole thing has a special status, it will function as a corridor,” Kochinian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Especially if no such arrangement is put in place for our passenger and cargo traffic through Azerbaijani territory.” A Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani commission discussing practical modalities of the transport links met in Moscow earlier this month. A Russian government statement said its Armenian and Azerbaijani members “brought closer their positions on issues of border, customs and other types of control.” Armenian Central Bank Ups 2022 Growth Forecast June 14, 2022 Armenia - Martin Galtsian, the chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia, speaks at a news conference in Yerevan, June 3, 2021. The Central Bank significantly upgraded its 2022 growth forecast for Armenia on Tuesday, saying that Russia’s economy is doing better than expected after crippling sanctions imposed by the West. It also made clear that it will not intervene to reverse or stop a sharp appreciation of the national currency, the dram, which began a few weeks after Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24. The bank predicted in mid-March that economic growth in Armenia will slow down to 1.6 percent this year due to anticipated fallout from the conflict. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank forecast even lower growth rates, pointing to the South Caucasus state’s close economic ties with Russia. The Central Bank governor, Martin Galstian, said the Armenian economy is now on course to expand by 4.9 percent in 2022. “This has mainly to with the presence of foreign visitors in Armenia and the Russian economy’s short-term performance which is not as bad as we expected earlier,” Galstian told a news conference. Armenia - Russian nationals are seen in downtown Yerevan, March 7, 2022. The visitors mentioned by him presumably include thousands of Russians who moved to Armenia and/or opened bank accounts there following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. About 27,000 foreigners, most of them Russian citizens, opened Armenian bank accounts from February 24 through the end of March. This seems to explain why hard currency inflows to Armenia doubled, according to the Central Bank, in April. Armenian government data shows that GDP growth accelerated to 8.6 percent in the first quarter of this year and continued unabated in April on the back of sharp gains in the services and construction sectors. “A considerable influx of foreign visitors and rising internal private spending are helping to boost the services sector and overall consumer demand,” said Galstian. He also cautioned: “The Central Bank Board reckons that macroeconomic prospects remain highly uncertain due to geopolitical developments.” RUSSIA - An oil pumpjack is seen near the village of Yamashi in the Republic of Tatarstan, April 5, 2020: Armenia is also very dependent on multimillion-dollar remittances from hundreds of thousands of its citizens working in Russia. The Russian ruble is now stronger than it was before the war, having more than regained its value lost in late February and early March. The Armenian dram has similarly strengthened against the U.S. dollar by almost 24 percent since the middle of March. Its continuing appreciation is prompting growing concerns from Armenian export-oriented firms and fuelling calls for Central Bank intervention. Galstian said that the bank will not cut interest rates or intervene in the domestic currency market to cut the dram’s value. He argued that the stronger dram is somewhat easing external inflationary pressures aggravated by the Ukraine war. “By artificially weakening the dram we would create an even worse inflationary situation which would hit all citizens, including exporters,” said Galstian. Earlier in the day, the Central Bank board decided to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 9.25 percent. According to the bank, consumer price inflation in Armenia continued to rise in May, reaching an annual rate of 9 percent. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2022 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.